A saw, such as a band saw having a saw blade, is typically employed to cut various materials including metallic and wooden objects. The saw blade includes a blade backer of a certain thickness. A cutting edge is formed on the blade backer. The cutting edge has a plurality of teeth.
There are a number of characteristics for a saw blade that manufacturers attempt to control to provide a saw blade appropriate for a particular application. A variety of approaches are used to achieve the desired saw blade characteristics. The approaches include selecting the materials used to manufacture the blade and designing the profiles of the saw blade teeth. For example, manufactures may incorporate relatively hard materials, such as carbide, bi-metal, cermet, ceramic, diamond, or the like, into the tips of blade teeth. Because such hard materials are relatively expensive, incorporating the material only into the blade tip allows manufactures to achieve the desired characteristics of the saw blade, while minimizing cost of blade production.
In order to incorporate the selected hard material into the tooth tip, a pellet of the selected hard material is first welded to an apex of each blade tooth. Once the pellet of the selected material is welded to the tooth apex, blade manufactures grind the tooth tip. The welded material on the tooth tip typically has a width that is slightly greater than the width of the tooth and blade. The sides of the tip are typically then ground to a tip width that is essentially the same as width or thickness of the tooth and blade backer.
Blade kerf is the overall width of the cut on a workpiece as the saw blade advances through the workpiece. Generally, it is desirable to have a kerf that is relatively wider than the thickness of the tooth and blade backer, while cutting certain materials. In order to increase the kerf width, blade manufacturers transversely or laterally position portions of the teeth including their tips to locations outside of the thickness or path of travel of the blade backer by a process known as mechanical setting.
To increase blade kerf by mechanical setting, the orientation of the teeth relative to the blade backer are mechanically repositioned by applying a force on either side of each individual tooth. The force plastically deforms the tooth so that the tooth tip is transversely or laterally offset relative to the longitudinal length of the blade backer or the direction of cutting action travel on the side opposite to the impact. Based on the blade characteristics desired, the individual teeth can be offset to the either side of the blade backer, with a repeating and/or alternating pattern.
It is desirable to try to control the overall tooth offset of a given blade to ensure that the kerf is precise and uniform over the entire length of the blade. While mechanical setting allows blade manufactures to increase blade kerf, the distance the teeth are offset from the blade backer as a result of the impact force may not be as controlled as may be desired for a quality cut finish and even wear of the teeth. There are also physical and manufacturing limits as to how far the teeth can be offset. Furthermore, mechanically setting the blade teeth adds an additional processes step to the manufacturing process, which in turn increases blade manufacturing costs, production scheduling and lead time.
Thus, there is a need for a saw blade that overcomes the disadvantages of known saw blades and known methods of manufacturing. The saw blade of this disclosure and method of making a saw blade satisfy these needs.